June 19th.—Once safely shut into my own room, I opened these pages, and
prepared to go on with that part of the day’s record which was still
left to write.
For ten minutes or more I sat idle, with the pen in my hand, thinking
over the events of the last twelve hours. When I at last addressed
myself to my task, I found a difficulty in proceeding with it which
I had never experienced before. In spite of my efforts to fix my
thoughts on the matter in hand, they wandered away with the strangest
persistency in the one direction of Sir Percival and the Count, and
all the interest which I tried to concentrate on my journal centred
instead in that private interview between them which had been put off
all through the day, and which was now to take place in the silence and
solitude of the night.
In this perverse state of my mind, the recollection of what had passed
since the morning would not come back to me, and there was no resource
but to close my journal and to get away from it for a little while.
I opened the door which led from my bedroom into my sitting-room, and
having passed through, pulled it to again, to prevent any accident
in case of draught with the candle left on the dressing-table. My
sitting-room window was wide open, and I leaned out listlessly to look
at the night.
It was dark and quiet. Neither moon nor stars were visible. There was
a smell like rain in the still, heavy air, and I put my hand out of
window. No. The rain was only threatening, it had not come yet.
I remained leaning on the window-sill for nearly a quarter of an hour,
looking out absently into the black darkness, and hearing nothing,
except now and then the voices of the servants, or the distant sound of
a closing door, in the lower part of the house.
Just as I was turning away wearily from the window to go back to the
bedroom and make a second attempt to complete the unfinished entry in
my journal, I smelt the odour of tobacco-smoke stealing towards me on
the heavy night air. The next moment I saw a tiny red spark advancing
from the farther end of the house in the pitch darkness. I heard no
footsteps, and I could see nothing but the spark. It travelled along
in the night, passed the window at which I was standing, and stopped
opposite my bedroom window, inside which I had left the light burning
on the dressing-table.
The spark remained stationary for a moment, then moved back again in
the direction from which it had advanced. As I followed its progress
I saw a second red spark, larger than the first, approaching from the
distance. The two met together in the darkness. Remembering who smoked
cigarettes and who smoked cigars, I inferred immediately that the Count
had come out first to look and listen under my window, and that Sir
Percival had afterwards joined him. They must both have been walking
on the lawn—or I should certainly have heard Sir Percival’s heavy
footfall, though the Count’s soft step might have escaped me, even on
the gravel walk.
I waited quietly at the window, certain that they could neither of them
see me in the darkness of the room.
“What’s the matter?” I heard Sir Percival say in a low voice. “Why
don’t you come in and sit down?”
“I want to see the light out of that window,” replied the Count softly.
“What harm does the light do?”
“It shows she is not in bed yet. She is sharp enough to suspect
something, and bold enough to come downstairs and listen, if she can
get the chance. Patience, Percival—patience.”
“Humbug! You’re always talking of patience.”
“I shall talk of something else presently. My good friend, you are on
the edge of your domestic precipice, and if I let you give the women
one other chance, on my sacred word of honour they will push you over
it!”
“What the devil do you mean?”
“We will come to our explanations, Percival, when the light is out of
that window, and when I have had one little look at the rooms on each
side of the library, and a peep at the staircase as well.”
They slowly moved away, and the rest of the conversation between them
(which had been conducted throughout in the same low tones) ceased to
be audible. It was no matter. I had heard enough to determine me on
justifying the Count’s opinion of my sharpness and my courage. Before
the red sparks were out of sight in the darkness I had made up my mind
that there should be a listener when those two men sat down to their
talk—and that the listener, in spite of all the Count’s precautions to
the contrary, should be myself. I wanted but one motive to sanction the
act to my own conscience, and to give me courage enough for performing
it—and that motive I had. Laura’s honour, Laura’s happiness—Laura’s
life itself—might depend on my quick ears and my faithful memory
to-night.
I had heard the Count say that he meant to examine the rooms on each
side of the library, and the staircase as well, before he entered on
any explanation with Sir Percival. This expression of his intentions
was necessarily sufficient to inform me that the library was the room
in which he proposed that the conversation should take place. The one
moment of time which was long enough to bring me to that conclusion was
also the moment which showed me a means of baffling his precautions—or,
in other words, of hearing what he and Sir Percival said to each other,
without the risk of descending at all into the lower regions of the
house.
In speaking of the rooms on the ground floor I have mentioned
incidentally the verandah outside them, on which they all opened by
means of French windows, extending from the cornice to the floor. The
top of this verandah was flat, the rain-water being carried off from
it by pipes into tanks which helped to supply the house. On the narrow
leaden roof, which ran along past the bedrooms, and which was rather
less, I should think, than three feet below the sills of the window, a
row of flower-pots was ranged, with wide intervals between each pot—the
whole being protected from falling in high winds by an ornamental iron
railing along the edge of the roof.
The plan which had now occurred to me was to get out at my sitting-room
window on to this roof, to creep along noiselessly till I reached
that part of it which was immediately over the library window, and to
crouch down between the flower-pots, with my ear against the outer
railing. If Sir Percival and the Count sat and smoked to-night, as I
had seen them sitting and smoking many nights before, with their chairs
close at the open window, and their feet stretched on the zinc garden
seats which were placed under the verandah, every word they said to
each other above a whisper (and no long conversation, as we all know
by experience, can be carried on IN a whisper) must inevitably reach
my ears. If, on the other hand, they chose to-night to sit far back
inside the room, then the chances were that I should hear little or
nothing—and in that case, I must run the far more serious risk of
trying to outwit them downstairs.
Strongly as I was fortified in my resolution by the desperate nature
of our situation, I hoped most fervently that I might escape this last
emergency. My courage was only a woman’s courage after all, and it was
very near to failing me when I thought of trusting myself on the ground
floor, at the dead of night, within reach of Sir Percival and the Count.
I went softly back to my bedroom to try the safer experiment of the
verandah roof first.
A complete change in my dress was imperatively necessary for many
reasons. I took off my silk gown to begin with, because the slightest
noise from it on that still night might have betrayed me. I next
removed the white and cumbersome parts of my underclothing, and
replaced them by a petticoat of dark flannel. Over this I put my black
travelling cloak, and pulled the hood on to my head. In my ordinary
evening costume I took up the room of three men at least. In my present
dress, when it was held close about me, no man could have passed
through the narrowest spaces more easily than I. The little breadth
left on the roof of the verandah, between the flower-pots on one side
and the wall and the windows of the house on the other, made this a
serious consideration. If I knocked anything down, if I made the least
noise, who could say what the consequences might be?
I only waited to put the matches near the candle before I extinguished
it, and groped my way back into the sitting-room. I locked that door,
as I had locked my bedroom door—then quietly got out of the window, and
cautiously set my feet on the leaden roof of the verandah.
My two rooms were at the inner extremity of the new wing of the house
in which we all lived, and I had five windows to pass before I could
reach the position it was necessary to take up immediately over the
library. The first window belonged to a spare room which was empty. The
second and third windows belonged to Laura’s room. The fourth window
belonged to Sir Percival’s room. The fifth belonged to the Countess’s
room. The others, by which it was not necessary for me to pass, were
the windows of the Count’s dressing-room, of the bathroom, and of the
second empty spare room.
No sound reached my ears—the black blinding darkness of the night was
all round me when I first stood on the verandah, except at that part
of it which Madame Fosco’s window overlooked. There, at the very place
above the library to which my course was directed—there I saw a gleam
of light! The Countess was not yet in bed.
It was too late to draw back—it was no time to wait. I determined to go
on at all hazards, and trust for security to my own caution and to the
darkness of the night. “For Laura’s sake!” I thought to myself, as I
took the first step forward on the roof, with one hand holding my cloak
close round me, and the other groping against the wall of the house.
It was better to brush close by the wall than to risk striking my feet
against the flower-pots within a few inches of me, on the other side.
I passed the dark window of the spare room, trying the leaden roof
at each step with my foot before I risked resting my weight on it. I
passed the dark windows of Laura’s room (“God bless her and keep her
to-night!”). I passed the dark window of Sir Percival’s room. Then I
waited a moment, knelt down with my hands to support me, and so crept
to my position, under the protection of the low wall between the bottom
of the lighted window and the verandah roof.
When I ventured to look up at the window itself I found that the top of
it only was open, and that the blind inside was drawn down. While I was
looking I saw the shadow of Madame Fosco pass across the white field
of the blind—then pass slowly back again. Thus far she could not have
heard me, or the shadow would surely have stopped at the blind, even if
she had wanted courage enough to open the window and look out?
I placed myself sideways against the railing of the verandah—first
ascertaining, by touching them, the position of the flower-pots on
either side of me. There was room enough for me to sit between them and
no more. The sweet-scented leaves of the flower on my left hand just
brushed my cheek as I lightly rested my head against the railing.
The first sounds that reached me from below were caused by the opening
or closing (most probably the latter) of three doors in succession—the
doors, no doubt, leading into the hall and into the rooms on each side
of the library, which the Count had pledged himself to examine. The
first object that I saw was the red spark again travelling out into the
night from under the verandah, moving away towards my window, waiting a
moment, and then returning to the place from which it had set out.
“The devil take your restlessness! When do you mean to sit down?”
growled Sir Percival’s voice beneath me.
“Ouf! how hot it is!” said the Count, sighing and puffing wearily.
His exclamation was followed by the scraping of the garden chairs on
the tiled pavement under the verandah—the welcome sound which told me
they were going to sit close at the window as usual. So far the chance
was mine. The clock in the turret struck the quarter to twelve as they
settled themselves in their chairs. I heard Madame Fosco through the
open window yawning, and saw her shadow pass once more across the white
field of the blind.
Meanwhile, Sir Percival and the Count began talking together below, now
and then dropping their voices a little lower than usual, but never
sinking them to a whisper. The strangeness and peril of my situation,
the dread, which I could not master, of Madame Fosco’s lighted window,
made it difficult, almost impossible, for me, at first, to keep my
presence of mind, and to fix my attention solely on the conversation
beneath. For some minutes I could only succeed in gathering the general
substance of it. I understood the Count to say that the one window
alight was his wife’s, that the ground floor of the house was quite
clear, and that they might now speak to each other without fear of
accidents. Sir Percival merely answered by upbraiding his friend with
having unjustifiably slighted his wishes and neglected his interests
all through the day. The Count thereupon defended himself by declaring
that he had been beset by certain troubles and anxieties which had
absorbed all his attention, and that the only safe time to come to an
explanation was a time when they could feel certain of being neither
interrupted nor overheard. “We are at a serious crisis in our affairs,
Percival,” he said, “and if we are to decide on the future at all, we
must decide secretly to-night.”
That sentence of the Count’s was the first which my attention was
ready enough to master exactly as it was spoken. From this point, with
certain breaks and interruptions, my whole interest fixed breathlessly
on the conversation, and I followed it word for word.
“Crisis?” repeated Sir Percival. “It’s a worse crisis than you think
for, I can tell you.”
“So I should suppose, from your behaviour for the last day or two,”
returned the other coolly. “But wait a little. Before we advance to
what I do NOT know, let us be quite certain of what I DO know. Let us
first see if I am right about the time that is past, before I make any
proposal to you for the time that is to come.”
“Stop till I get the brandy and water. Have some yourself.”
“Thank you, Percival. The cold water with pleasure, a spoon, and the
basin of sugar. Eau sucrée, my friend—nothing more.”
“Sugar-and-water for a man of your age!—There! mix your sickly mess.
You foreigners are all alike.”
“Now listen, Percival. I will put our position plainly before you, as
I understand it, and you shall say if I am right or wrong. You and I
both came back to this house from the Continent with our affairs very
seriously embarrassed—”
“Cut it short! I wanted some thousands and you some hundreds, and
without the money we were both in a fair way to go to the dogs
together. There’s the situation. Make what you can of it. Go on.”
“Well, Percival, in your own solid English words, you wanted some
thousands and I wanted some hundreds, and the only way of getting them
was for you to raise the money for your own necessity (with a small
margin beyond for my poor little hundreds) by the help of your wife.
What did I tell you about your wife on our way to England?—and what did
I tell you again when we had come here, and when I had seen for myself
the sort of woman Miss Halcombe was?”
“How should I know? You talked nineteen to the dozen, I suppose, just
as usual.”
“I said this: Human ingenuity, my friend, has hitherto only discovered
two ways in which a man can manage a woman. One way is to knock her
down—a method largely adopted by the brutal lower orders of the people,
but utterly abhorrent to the refined and educated classes above them.
The other way (much longer, much more difficult, but in the end not
less certain) is never to accept a provocation at a woman’s hands. It
holds with animals, it holds with children, and it holds with women,
who are nothing but children grown up. Quiet resolution is the one
quality the animals, the children, and the women all fail in. If they
can once shake this superior quality in their master, they get the
better of HIM. If they can never succeed in disturbing it, he gets
the better of THEM. I said to you, Remember that plain truth when you
want your wife to help you to the money. I said, Remember it doubly
and trebly in the presence of your wife’s sister, Miss Halcombe. Have
you remembered it? Not once in all the implications that have twisted
themselves about us in this house. Every provocation that your wife and
her sister could offer to you, you instantly accepted from them. Your
mad temper lost the signature to the deed, lost the ready money, set
Miss Halcombe writing to the lawyer for the first time.”
“First time! Has she written again?”
“Yes, she has written again to-day.”
A chair fell on the pavement of the verandah—fell with a crash, as if
it had been kicked down.
It was well for me that the Count’s revelation roused Sir Percival’s
anger as it did. On hearing that I had been once more discovered I
started so that the railing against which I leaned cracked again. Had
he followed me to the inn? Did he infer that I must have given my
letters to Fanny when I told him I had none for the post-bag? Even if
it was so, how could he have examined the letters when they had gone
straight from my hand to the bosom of the girl’s dress?
“Thank your lucky star,” I heard the Count say next, “that you have me
in the house to undo the harm as fast as you do it. Thank your lucky
star that I said No when you were mad enough to talk of turning the key
to-day on Miss Halcombe, as you turned it in your mischievous folly on
your wife. Where are your eyes? Can you look at Miss Halcombe and not
see that she has the foresight and the resolution of a man? With that
woman for my friend I would snap these fingers of mine at the world.
With that woman for my enemy, I, with all my brains and experience—I,
Fosco, cunning as the devil himself, as you have told me a hundred
times—I walk, in your English phrase, upon egg-shells! And this grand
creature—I drink her health in my sugar-and-water—this grand creature,
who stands in the strength of her love and her courage, firm as a rock,
between us two and that poor, flimsy, pretty blonde wife of yours—this
magnificent woman, whom I admire with all my soul, though I oppose her
in your interests and in mine, you drive to extremities as if she was
no sharper and no bolder than the rest of her sex. Percival! Percival!
you deserve to fail, and you HAVE failed.”
There was a pause. I write the villain’s words about myself because I
mean to remember them—because I hope yet for the day when I may speak
out once for all in his presence, and cast them back one by one in his
teeth.
Sir Percival was the first to break the silence again.
“Yes, yes, bully and bluster as much as you like,” he said sulkily;
“the difficulty about the money is not the only difficulty. You would
be for taking strong measures with the women yourself—if you knew as
much as I do.”
“We will come to that second difficulty all in good time,” rejoined
the Count. “You may confuse yourself, Percival, as much as you please,
but you shall not confuse me. Let the question of the money be settled
first. Have I convinced your obstinacy? have I shown you that your
temper will not let you help yourself?—Or must I go back, and (as you
put it in your dear straightforward English) bully and bluster a little
more?”
“Pooh! It’s easy enough to grumble at ME. Say what is to be done—that’s
a little harder.”
“Is it? Bah! This is what is to be done: You give up all direction in
the business from to-night—you leave it for the future in my hands
only. I am talking to a Practical British man—ha? Well, Practical, will
that do for you?”
“What do you propose if I leave it all to you?”
“Answer me first. Is it to be in my hands or not?”
“Say it is in your hands—what then?”
“A few questions, Percival, to begin with. I must wait a little yet,
to let circumstances guide me, and I must know, in every possible way,
what those circumstances are likely to be. There is no time to lose.
I have told you already that Miss Halcombe has written to the lawyer
to-day for the second time.”
“How did you find it out? What did she say?”
“If I told you, Percival, we should only come back at the end to where
we are now. Enough that I have found it out—and the finding has caused
that trouble and anxiety which made me so inaccessible to you all
through to-day. Now, to refresh my memory about your affairs—it is some
time since I talked them over with you. The money has been raised,
in the absence of your wife’s signature, by means of bills at three
months—raised at a cost that makes my poverty-stricken foreign hair
stand on end to think of it! When the bills are due, is there really
and truly no earthly way of paying them but by the help of your wife?”
“None.”
“What! You have no money at the bankers?”
“A few hundreds, when I want as many thousands.”
“Have you no other security to borrow upon?”
“Not a shred.”
“What have you actually got with your wife at the present moment?”
“Nothing but the interest of her twenty thousand pounds—barely enough
to pay our daily expenses.”
“What do you expect from your wife?”
“Three thousand a year when her uncle dies.”
“A fine fortune, Percival. What sort of a man is this uncle? Old?”
“No—neither old nor young.”
“A good-tempered, freely-living man? Married? No—I think my wife told
me, not married.”
“Of course not. If he was married, and had a son, Lady Glyde would not
be next heir to the property. I’ll tell you what he is. He’s a maudlin,
twaddling, selfish fool, and bores everybody who comes near him about
the state of his health.”
“Men of that sort, Percival, live long, and marry malevolently when you
least expect it. I don’t give you much, my friend, for your chance of
the three thousand a year. Is there nothing more that comes to you from
your wife?”
“Nothing.”
“Absolutely nothing?”
“Absolutely nothing—except in case of her death.”
“Aha! in the case of her death.”
There was another pause. The Count moved from the verandah to the
gravel walk outside. I knew that he had moved by his voice. “The rain
has come at last,” I heard him say. It had come. The state of my cloak
showed that it had been falling thickly for some little time.
The Count went back under the verandah—I heard the chair creak beneath
his weight as he sat down in it again.
“Well, Percival,” he said, “and in the case of Lady Glyde’s death, what
do you get then?”
“If she leaves no children——”
“Which she is likely to do?”
“Which she is not in the least likely to do——”
“Yes?”
“Why, then I get her twenty thousand pounds.”
“Paid down?”
“Paid down.”
They were silent once more. As their voices ceased Madame Fosco’s
shadow darkened the blind again. Instead of passing this time, it
remained, for a moment, quite still. I saw her fingers steal round the
corner of the blind, and draw it on one side. The dim white outline of
her face, looking out straight over me, appeared behind the window. I
kept still, shrouded from head to foot in my black cloak. The rain,
which was fast wetting me, dripped over the glass, blurred it, and
prevented her from seeing anything. “More rain!” I heard her say to
herself. She dropped the blind, and I breathed again freely.
The talk went on below me, the Count resuming it this time.
“Percival! do you care about your wife?”
“Fosco! that’s rather a downright question.”
“I am a downright man, and I repeat it.”
“Why the devil do you look at me in that way?”
“You won’t answer me? Well, then, let us say your wife dies before the
summer is out——”
“Drop it, Fosco!”
“Let us say your wife dies——”
“Drop it, I tell you!”
“In that case, you would gain twenty thousand pounds, and you would
lose——”
“I should lose the chance of three thousand a year.”
“The REMOTE chance, Percival—the remote chance only. And you want
money, at once. In your position the gain is certain—the loss doubtful.”
“Speak for yourself as well as for me. Some of the money I want has
been borrowed for you. And if you come to gain, my wife’s death would
be ten thousand pounds in your wife’s pocket. Sharp as you are, you
seem to have conveniently forgotten Madame Fosco’s legacy. Don’t look
at me in that way! I won’t have it! What with your looks and your
questions, upon my soul, you make my flesh creep!”
“Your flesh? Does flesh mean conscience in English? I speak of your
wife’s death as I speak of a possibility. Why not? The respectable
lawyers who scribble-scrabble your deeds and your wills look the deaths
of living people in the face. Do lawyers make your flesh creep? Why
should I? It is my business to-night to clear up your position beyond
the possibility of mistake, and I have now done it. Here is your
position. If your wife lives, you pay those bills with her signature to
the parchment. If your wife dies, you pay them with her death.”
As he spoke the light in Madame Fosco’s room was extinguished, and the
whole second floor of the house was now sunk in darkness.
“Talk! talk!” grumbled Sir Percival. “One would think, to hear you,
that my wife’s signature to the deed was got already.”
“You have left the matter in my hands,” retorted the Count, “and I
have more than two months before me to turn round in. Say no more
about it, if you please, for the present. When the bills are due, you
will see for yourself if my ‘talk! talk!’ is worth something, or if
it is not. And now, Percival, having done with the money matters for
to-night, I can place my attention at your disposal, if you wish to
consult me on that second difficulty which has mixed itself up with
our little embarrassments, and which has so altered you for the worse,
that I hardly know you again. Speak, my friend—and pardon me if I
shock your fiery national tastes by mixing myself a second glass of
sugar-and-water.”
“It’s very well to say speak,” replied Sir Percival, in a far more
quiet and more polite tone than he had yet adopted, “but it’s not so
easy to know how to begin.”
“Shall I help you?” suggested the Count. “Shall I give this private
difficulty of yours a name? What if I call it—Anne Catherick?”
“Look here, Fosco, you and I have known each other for a long time, and
if you have helped me out of one or two scrapes before this, I have
done the best I could to help you in return, as far as money would go.
We have made as many friendly sacrifices, on both sides, as men could,
but we have had our secrets from each other, of course—haven’t we?”
“You have had a secret from me, Percival. There is a skeleton in your
cupboard here at Blackwater Park that has peeped out in these last few
days at other people besides yourself.”
“Well, suppose it has. If it doesn’t concern you, you needn’t be
curious about it, need you?”
“Do I look curious about it?”
“Yes, you do.”
“So! so! my face speaks the truth, then? What an immense foundation
of good there must be in the nature of a man who arrives at my age,
and whose face has not yet lost the habit of speaking the truth!—Come,
Glyde! let us be candid one with the other. This secret of yours has
sought me: I have not sought it. Let us say I am curious—do you ask me,
as your old friend, to respect your secret, and to leave it, once for
all, in your own keeping?”
“Yes—that’s just what I do ask.”
“Then my curiosity is at an end. It dies in me from this moment.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“What makes you doubt me?”
“I have had some experience, Fosco, of your roundabout ways, and I am
not so sure that you won’t worm it out of me after all.”
The chair below suddenly creaked again—I felt the trellis-work pillar
under me shake from top to bottom. The Count had started to his feet,
and had struck it with his hand in indignation.
“Percival! Percival!” he cried passionately, “do you know me no better
than that? Has all your experience shown you nothing of my character
yet? I am a man of the antique type! I am capable of the most exalted
acts of virtue—when I have the chance of performing them. It has been
the misfortune of my life that I have had few chances. My conception of
friendship is sublime! Is it my fault that your skeleton has peeped out
at me? Why do I confess my curiosity? You poor superficial Englishman,
it is to magnify my own self-control. I could draw your secret out of
you, if I liked, as I draw this finger out of the palm of my hand—you
know I could! But you have appealed to my friendship, and the duties of
friendship are sacred to me. See! I trample my base curiosity under my
feet. My exalted sentiments lift me above it. Recognise them, Percival!
imitate them, Percival! Shake hands—I forgive you.”
His voice faltered over the last words—faltered, as if he were actually
shedding tears!
Sir Percival confusedly attempted to excuse himself, but the Count was
too magnanimous to listen to him.
“No!” he said. “When my friend has wounded me, I can pardon him without
apologies. Tell me, in plain words, do you want my help?”
“Yes, badly enough.”
“And you can ask for it without compromising yourself?”
“I can try, at any rate.”
“Try, then.”
“Well, this is how it stands:—I told you to-day that I had done my best
to find Anne Catherick, and failed.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Fosco! I’m a lost man if I DON’T find her.”
“Ha! Is it so serious as that?”
A little stream of light travelled out under the verandah, and fell
over the gravel-walk. The Count had taken the lamp from the inner part
of the room to see his friend clearly by the light of it.
“Yes!” he said. “Your face speaks the truth this time. Serious,
indeed—as serious as the money matters themselves.”
“More serious. As true as I sit here, more serious!”
The light disappeared again and the talk went on.
“I showed you the letter to my wife that Anne Catherick hid in the
sand,” Sir Percival continued. “There’s no boasting in that letter,
Fosco—she DOES know the Secret.”
“Say as little as possible, Percival, in my presence, of the Secret.
Does she know it from you?”
“No, from her mother.”
“Two women in possession of your private mind—bad, bad, bad, my
friend! One question here, before we go any farther. The motive of
your shutting up the daughter in the asylum is now plain enough to me,
but the manner of her escape is not quite so clear. Do you suspect
the people in charge of her of closing their eyes purposely, at the
instance of some enemy who could afford to make it worth their while?”
“No, she was the best-behaved patient they had—and, like fools, they
trusted her. She’s just mad enough to be shut up, and just sane enough
to ruin me when she’s at large—if you understand that?”
“I do understand it. Now, Percival, come at once to the point, and then
I shall know what to do. Where is the danger of your position at the
present moment?”
“Anne Catherick is in this neighbourhood, and in communication with
Lady Glyde—there’s the danger, plain enough. Who can read the letter
she hid in the sand, and not see that my wife is in possession of the
Secret, deny it as she may?”
“One moment, Percival. If Lady Glyde does know the Secret, she must
know also that it is a compromising secret for you. As your wife,
surely it is her interest to keep it?”
“Is it? I’m coming to that. It might be her interest if she cared
two straws about me. But I happen to be an encumbrance in the way of
another man. She was in love with him before she married me—she’s in
love with him now—an infernal vagabond of a drawing-master, named
Hartright.”
“My dear friend! what is there extraordinary in that? They are all in
love with some other man. Who gets the first of a woman’s heart? In all
my experience I have never yet met with the man who was Number One.
Number Two, sometimes. Number Three, Four, Five, often. Number One,
never! He exists, of course—but I have not met with him.”
“Wait! I haven’t done yet. Who do you think helped Anne Catherick to
get the start, when the people from the mad-house were after her?
Hartright. Who do you think saw her again in Cumberland? Hartright.
Both times he spoke to her alone. Stop! don’t interrupt me. The
scoundrel’s as sweet on my wife as she is on him. He knows the Secret,
and she knows the Secret. Once let them both get together again, and
it’s her interest and his interest to turn their information against
me.”
“Gently, Percival—gently! Are you insensible to the virtue of Lady
Glyde?”
“That for the virtue of Lady Glyde! I believe in nothing about her but
her money. Don’t you see how the case stands? She might be harmless
enough by herself; but if she and that vagabond Hartright——”
“Yes, yes, I see. Where is Mr. Hartright?”
“Out of the country. If he means to keep a whole skin on his bones, I
recommend him not to come back in a hurry.”
“Are you sure he is out of the country?”
“Certain. I had him watched from the time he left Cumberland to the
time he sailed. Oh, I’ve been careful, I can tell you! Anne Catherick
lived with some people at a farmhouse near Limmeridge. I went there
myself, after she had given me the slip, and made sure that they knew
nothing. I gave her mother a form of letter to write to Miss Halcombe,
exonerating me from any bad motive in putting her under restraint. I’ve
spent, I’m afraid to say how much, in trying to trace her, and in spite
of it all, she turns up here and escapes me on my own property! How do
I know who else may see her, who else may speak to her? That prying
scoundrel, Hartright, may come back without my knowing it, and may make
use of her to-morrow——”
“Not he, Percival! While I am on the spot, and while that woman is in
the neighbourhood, I will answer for our laying hands on her before
Mr. Hartright—even if he does come back. I see! yes, yes, I see! The
finding of Anne Catherick is the first necessity—make your mind easy
about the rest. Your wife is here, under your thumb—Miss Halcombe is
inseparable from her, and is, therefore, under your thumb also—and Mr.
Hartright is out of the country. This invisible Anne of yours is all we
have to think of for the present. You have made your inquiries?”
“Yes. I have been to her mother, I have ransacked the village—and all
to no purpose.”
“Is her mother to be depended on?”
“Yes.”
“She has told your secret once.”
“She won’t tell it again.”
“Why not? Are her own interests concerned in keeping it, as well as
yours?”
“Yes—deeply concerned.”
“I am glad to hear it, Percival, for your sake. Don’t be discouraged,
my friend. Our money matters, as I told you, leave me plenty of time to
turn round in, and I may search for Anne Catherick to-morrow to better
purpose than you. One last question before we go to bed.”
“What is it?”
“It is this. When I went to the boat-house to tell Lady Glyde that the
little difficulty of her signature was put off, accident took me there
in time to see a strange woman parting in a very suspicious manner from
your wife. But accident did not bring me near enough to see this same
woman’s face plainly. I must know how to recognise our invisible Anne.
What is she like?”
“Like? Come! I’ll tell you in two words. She’s a sickly likeness of my
wife.”
The chair creaked, and the pillar shook once more. The Count was on his
feet again—this time in astonishment.
“What!!!” he exclaimed eagerly.
“Fancy my wife, after a bad illness, with a touch of something wrong in
her head—and there is Anne Catherick for you,” answered Sir Percival.
“Are they related to each other?”
“Not a bit of it.”
“And yet so like?”
“Yes, so like. What are you laughing about?”
There was no answer, and no sound of any kind. The Count was laughing
in his smooth silent internal way.
“What are you laughing about?” reiterated Sir Percival.
“Perhaps at my own fancies, my good friend. Allow me my Italian
humour—do I not come of the illustrious nation which invented the
exhibition of Punch? Well, well, well, I shall know Anne Catherick when
I see her—and so enough for to-night. Make your mind easy, Percival.
Sleep, my son, the sleep of the just, and see what I will do for
you when daylight comes to help us both. I have my projects and my
plans here in my big head. You shall pay those bills and find Anne
Catherick—my sacred word of honour on it, but you shall! Am I a friend
to be treasured in the best corner of your heart, or am I not? Am I
worth those loans of money which you so delicately reminded me of a
little while since? Whatever you do, never wound me in my sentiments
any more. Recognise them, Percival! imitate them, Percival! I forgive
you again—I shake hands again. Good-night!”
Not another word was spoken. I heard the Count close the library door.
I heard Sir Percival barring up the window-shutters. It had been
raining, raining all the time. I was cramped by my position and chilled
to the bones. When I first tried to move, the effort was so painful to
me that I was obliged to desist. I tried a second time, and succeeded
in rising to my knees on the wet roof.
As I crept to the wall, and raised myself against it, I looked back,
and saw the window of the Count’s dressing-room gleam into light. My
sinking courage flickered up in me again, and kept my eyes fixed on
his window, as I stole my way back, step by step, past the wall of the
house.
The clock struck the quarter after one, when I laid my hands on the
window-sill of my own room. I had seen nothing and heard nothing which
could lead me to suppose that my retreat had been discovered.
X
June 20th.—Eight o’clock. The sun is shining in a clear sky. I have not
been near my bed—I have not once closed my weary wakeful eyes. From the
same window at which I looked out into the darkness of last night, I
look out now at the bright stillness of the morning.
I count the hours that have passed since I escaped to the shelter of
this room by my own sensations—and those hours seem like weeks.
How short a time, and yet how long to ME—since I sank down in the
darkness, here, on the floor—drenched to the skin, cramped in every
limb, cold to the bones, a useless, helpless, panic-stricken creature.
I hardly know when I roused myself. I hardly know when I groped my
way back to the bedroom, and lighted the candle, and searched (with a
strange ignorance, at first, of where to look for them) for dry clothes
to warm me. The doing of these things is in my mind, but not the time
when they were done.
Can I even remember when the chilled, cramped feeling left me, and the
throbbing heat came in its place?
Surely it was before the sun rose? Yes, I heard the clock strike
three. I remember the time by the sudden brightness and clearness, the
feverish strain and excitement of all my faculties which came with
it. I remember my resolution to control myself, to wait patiently
hour after hour, till the chance offered of removing Laura from this
horrible place, without the danger of immediate discovery and pursuit.
I remember the persuasion settling itself in my mind that the words
those two men had said to each other would furnish us, not only with
our justification for leaving the house, but with our weapons of
defence against them as well. I recall the impulse that awakened in
me to preserve those words in writing, exactly as they were spoken,
while the time was my own, and while my memory vividly retained them.
All this I remember plainly: there is no confusion in my head yet. The
coming in here from the bedroom, with my pen and ink and paper, before
sunrise—the sitting down at the widely-opened window to get all the air
I could to cool me—the ceaseless writing, faster and faster, hotter and
hotter, driving on more and more wakefully, all through the dreadful
interval before the house was astir again—how clearly I recall it, from
the beginning by candle-light, to the end on the page before this, in
the sunshine of the new day!
Why do I sit here still? Why do I weary my hot eyes and my burning head
by writing more? Why not lie down and rest myself, and try to quench
the fever that consumes me, in sleep?
I dare not attempt it. A fear beyond all other fears has got possession
of me. I am afraid of this heat that parches my skin. I am afraid of
the creeping and throbbing that I feel in my head. If I lie down now,
how do I know that I may have the sense and the strength to rise again?
Oh, the rain, the rain—the cruel rain that chilled me last night!
Nine o’clock. Was it nine struck, or eight? Nine, surely? I am
shivering again—shivering, from head to foot, in the summer air. Have I
been sitting here asleep? I don’t know what I have been doing.
Oh, my God! am I going to be ill?
Ill, at such a time as this!
My head—I am sadly afraid of my head. I can write, but the lines all
run together. I see the words. Laura—I can write Laura, and see I write
it. Eight or nine—which was it?
So cold, so cold—oh, that rain last night!—and the strokes of the
clock, the strokes I can’t count, keep striking in my head——
* * * * * * * * * *
Note [At this place the entry in the Diary ceases to be legible. The
two or three lines which follow contain fragments of words only,
mingled with blots and scratches of the pen. The last marks on the
paper bear some resemblance to the first two letters (L and A) of the
name of Lady Glyde.
On the next page of the Diary, another entry appears. It is in a man’s
handwriting, large, bold, and firmly regular, and the date is “June the
21st.” It contains these lines—]